


They'll Say You Won the War

by NothingEnough



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Corpses, Horror, M/M, Slice of Apocalypse, Spoilers, Surreal, Swearing, Teen Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-26 12:34:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30106032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NothingEnough/pseuds/NothingEnough
Summary: "You can't just walk into NERV and start opening doors looking for your mommy!"(sometime post-e19, up to e25/EOE)
Relationships: Aida Kensuke/Suzuhara Touji
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	They'll Say You Won the War

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DoubtingRabbit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoubtingRabbit/gifts).



Sakura led him down the back hall, like Kensuke hadn't been sleeping over since just after she was born and knew exactly where to go. The moment the creaky old hall door slid shut behind them, she revealed why.

"Like, you know you can't listen to him. He's, like, stupid old. I dunno if he remembers Second Impact kinda old, you know?"

Kensuke did know. Although, in fairness, he and Sakura had that in common with her grandfather. He nodded.

"He, Dad told him what happened to Big Brother. But… I dunno… it didn't stick."

"I don't think it's sticking to anybody right now."

"M-maybe not." She stopped outside Toji's door. The sign forbidding women of any kind entry to his abode was missing; there was just a pale rectangular shape in the leftover dust. "You didn't visit him in the hospital." Her small face hardened.

"They'd only let one civilian in," Kensuke said, pushing his glasses up his nose, "and we figured Class Rep would stand in for us."

"Did she tell you?"

"She said he felt lousy."

"It's."

She glanced around, as if some ghost in the unlit hall might overhear them. He'd always liked Sakura before now, but this new her gave him the jeebies. He felt weird enough having left his camera at home, weirder still having to talk to Toji's dad for a half-hour in the living room (he normally never saw the guy). Even weirder being stopped by Grandpa Suzuhara to be berated for not taking responsibility for, well, he never made that clear. But Sakura looking… well, she looked…

"He's mostly okay," she said. "They couldn't save his left leg. That's gone. What's left doesn't hurt him. I'm keeping up on his pills. But, just, like, be careful, okay? Don't get stupid and glomp him or anything, or they'll send him back. And I'm, like, all right, kinda scared they won't let him out again. You know?"

Grown up. She looked hard and grown up. At the ripe old age of eight.

"Sure, Sakura. I promise I won't hurt him." Kensuke smiled (convincingly, he hoped), held her gaze 'til the count of four, then looked at the ground between their feet.

Toji's leg. No one had told him about that. Poor Hikari must have been dying, holding that secret inside her.

Sakura slid Toji's door part way. She peered inside, then pushed it the rest of the way.

"Hey, Big Brother, you've got a visitor."

Kensuke half-expected her to hang around the doorway like a short sentinel, but she didn't; with a "He gets his sleeping-pill in an hour," she drifted alone down the hall toward her own room.

Its sign--that one had been pink and white with Hello Kitty holding up Sakura's name--was also gone. No one had said so, but those two facts convinced Kensuke that the Suzuharas were moving far away from Tokyo-3.

Maybe it'd be far enough.

He walked in and slid the door shut.

Toji lay stretched out on his futon, surrounded by at least three knee-high stacks of manga and basketball 'zines. A GameBoy Color lay faceup on his chest. His dark, narrow eyes rested on the ceiling, as though he couldn't give less of a crap who was bothering him now. A pair of shiny aluminum crutches lay on the floor by his futon. They were probably the newest thing in the whole apartment. They made Kensuke think of signing casts (the third time Toji had broken his leg, Kensuke had drawn a penis on the bottom heel and Toji had been _s_ _o pissed_ when the cast finally came off).

And, well, sure, Kensuke did swear he wouldn't hurt him, but not being stupid? That was a promise he couldn't keep. His glasses made a clattering plasticy sound as they flew off his face and skittered like a spider across the floor and under Toji's desk. The rest of him arced through the air and he toppled one of the stacks of manga (seinen on top, ecchi underneath) with his knee and barely felt it.

Toji squawked. Kensuke's arms slid under his best friend's body and pulled him into a (gentle, given the circumstances) embrace.

Thin. Toji felt so thin. Had he been this skinny a month ago?

"The fuck you doin', you dumb bastard, you're gonna break your damn glasses!"

"Oh, shut up, they've been through worse," he said, his words a slur against Toji's shoulder.

He smelled like the hospital. He normally did. After all, Sakura only got out two weeks ago.

He might've said something else, only Toji crushed him in a bear-hug that wrung all the air out of him. His dry lips pressed to the top of Kensuke's head. Kensuke regretted being too sick-stressed to bathe for the past three days, but Toji didn't seem to care.

"You thoughtless prick. Bet my sister told you not to jump me, and here you are."

"Can't help it. 's the hero worship."

"The fuck you on about?"

"You're the coolest guy I've ever met. 'course I'm gonna get weak in the knees and fall all over you. You, you were _in an Eva_ and you--"

He felt Toji's lips curve into a smile.

But then he shifted and his balance went haphazard, Toji's elbow gave out from under and he flopped onto his back, Kensuke pressed to his chest and this was how they always used to lie when Kensuke slept over except their legs were supposed to entwine and Kensuke choked on his own breath.

"Ah, fuckin' now you're gonna make me comfort you," Toji said.

"I'm sorry, you don't have to," Kensuke didn't say. He was too busy sobbing.

It took longer than it should've for him to get it back together, but less time than he'd feared. He didn't know who could blame him. Everyone else had had a month to cope with the details of what had become of Toji. Kensuke had had maybe four minutes.

After a while, the choking sobs downgraded to constant sniffles. He rubbed his face against the NY Yankees logo on the front of Toji's shirt.

"Gross," Toji said, his griping tone at odds with his almost-gentle smile.

"So ged be a dissue," Kensuke honked.

"Oh, sure, I'll just hop my happy ass to the bathroom for you. Get your own tissues, crybaby. The fuck you so sad about? It ain't like you're the fuckup who can't pilot."

One more snort (and an eyeroll from Toji) and he cleared his sinuses enough to talk clearly.

"I--wait, why can't you? I know, uh, what happened to Unit-03, but they could just get you synched with a new one, can't they?"

"You really that eager to stick me back in one of those fucking things?"

"You looked really cool in the plugsuit."

" _Shut up_. I--" Toji turned his head. Most of his room had been packed up, so the wall he glared at was mostly blank, just a Power Rangers poster that had been hanging next to the window for almost eight years. "--it doesn't work like that. You can't just get a new one."

"I don't get it, though," Kensuke said, throwing all his attention on the technical aspects of NERV operations because that was about all he could get his head around. "Sure, the Units are expensive, but so's pilot selection and training. Why would they not use you again? You haven't done anything that Ikari hasn't."

"One Eva, one pilot," Toji said, shrugged. "Ikari's Eva ain't dead, so he can still pilot. Mine is. Ain't another Eva in the world that would take me. Hell, figured that'd make you happy. You might still have a shot at piloting."

That got Kensuke rolling on a wave of dread and joy that lasted until Sakura knocked on the door with a glass of water and Toji's pills.

Before she got the door slid open, Kensuke had shot out of bed, knelt at his friend's bedside and pretended he'd just knocked over all that damn manga, muttering I'm-sorrys as he collected and restacked them.

Sakura fed Toji his meds and then turned viciously on Kensuke, jabbing a short finger right in his face while screaming all sorts of _I told you not to glomp him you jerk_. Kensuke barely defended himself. Toji defended him not at all; he seemed happy to see his sister anyplace but inside a NERV hospital room.

And he, despite being generally considered The Smart One between himself and Suzuhara, didn't really think about what Toji had said until three hours later, long after Toji's pills had sent him off to a twitchy sleep and Kensuke laid beside him.

Ikari would have appreciated his train of thought, which mostly ran around the ceiling he stared up at--he'd been studying the gray popcorn texturing since the first time he'd slept over. He knew every crack and how many pencil-holes Toji had put in the damn thing (thirteen).

He'd never see this so-familiar ceiling again once the Suzuharas moved. The thought filled him with more nostalgia than a fourteen-year-old should be able to hold. And where would they go? Why weren't they telling him? Was he supposed to not know?

Was Toji finally leaving him behind for good? What happens to a dynamic comedic duo when half of it moves away? And what happens to a pilot whose robot is--

It hit him, the thought almost a physical impact. Kensuke made a groaning sound deep in his throat. He shook Toji until his friend's dark eyes finally blearily opened.

"Fukken wut?"

"What'd you mean, your Eva is _dead_?"

Toji blinked. The whites of his eyes were almost entirely red. "'S dead, thass what it means. Ain't hard."

"But--no, it's hard, Toji, the Units are robots, not--"

"Nah, she wasn't a robot."

His speech was clearing up, but his eyes were still red and glassy.

The pills. He was still asleep. Might not be telling the truth, or he might be telling the truth he suppressed while awake. Kensuke had to try, just in case.

"What was she, then? What was Unit-03?"

"While I was in there," said Toji, "she got infected. By the Angel. Whatever they des'nated it. The Angel ate into her brain. It crawled all over me. Tried to get in. My head. But what I heard wasn't the Angel. It was the Eva I heard in my head. Only."

"... only?"

"It didn't sound like the computer in the fuckin' test plugs. It didn't sound like a computer at all. Sounded like my Ma."

And with that, Toji's eyes slipped back closed, and he slept until the dawn heralded the fading of his pills.

Kensuke did not sleep at all.

***

He had more time to plan than he'd thought after that first sleepless night.

Toji didn't return to school, nor did Sakura; but he popped by once every three days to reassure himself they hadn't moved yet. On his second visit, early into the long night, Toji whispered that NERV wanted to keep him around in case some trace of the Angel had infected him after all.

Kensuke thought it was worse than that. He sometimes got the feeling, from somewhere so deep in his soul that it lacked any words, that something was coming. The Angels attacked more often than ever, and the very, very few images that citizens were shown of their forms scared Kensuke shitless. 

They needed pilots to keep up with the madness raining down upon humankind, but they were kind of running out. Ikari and Ayanami and Soryuu barely showed up to class anymore. When they did, they all bore the exact same look of empty death burning from their eyes.

So he didn't think too much about how much worse it was. Instead he planned.

And when he visited the Suzuharas and Toji told him they'd finally gotten clearance to evacuate next week, he began his plan's execution with a:

"Okay. Then let's go save my mom."

"Your--your _what_?" Toji frowned, his arms crossing over his chest, and--yep, just like always, his lower lip pooched out. "Didja just have a stroke, man? We both know your mom's--"

"--where your mom was. Right?"

That slapped the offended right off Toji's face. But what replaced it scared Kensuke more than any Angel: for a second, he looked precisely like all of the other pilots had the last time he'd seen them, blank on the outside and filled with all the terrors of the universe. Then he shrugged, the fugue leaving with the gesture. "The hell you on about, Kensuke?"

"You said," he paused, risked bringing That Look back, "that Unit-03 spoke to you. That she sounded like your mother. What if, well, she was? You know nobody in 1A's got a mom. That's statistically unlikely, isn't it? So, like, every Unit's partly or entirely the body or spirit or whatever of the pilot's mother. That's why you can't have another Unit. That's why I might be on their list of future pilots. And if that's all true, then doesn't that mean all our moms are in NERV Headquarters?"

"Dude," Toji said, very strangely quiet. He didn't have That Look but sounded like he did. "I don't think that's how it works."

"I know she's not alive." His eager voice and too-quick speech betrayed something else. "I know, she's gotta be dead. But there must be some part of her that's not. That they've got in a bottle or a tank or something, somewhere, waiting for her Eva to be built or grown or, Toji, _I can't just leave her there_."

"You can't just walk into fucking NERV and start opening doors looking for your mommy, you dumb bastard!"

Unfortunately, that was indeed the summation of Kensuke's grand plan.

Fortunately, it was as easy as that.

-tbc-


End file.
